Gravatar – Globally Recognized Avatar

Did you often wonder about why when you posted in some WordPress blog, there will be always the same avatar appear in the comments you posted and you can’t find where to configure this avatar?

Actually it is very simple. Most WordPress blogs uses Gravatar where it is a type of globally recognized avatar. Once you have completed customize your gravatar with your own preferred picture, you customized avatar will be shown in the comments you posted in these WordPress blog’s comment page. The Gravatar is identified according to your email address, so it means whenever you are using that email to post comments, the Gravatar that you set for that email address will be shown as your avatar. However, do not fear that it will show your email address on the site. When you posted your comments, your email address will be encrypted into MD5 hash then it will match the MD5 hash at Gravatar server to retrieve your avatar. So there is nothing afraid of like such as retrieved by spam bots or other people can see you email etc. It is completely safe from these threats.

So how to customize it and where?
Very simple, just follow a few steps at below.

1. Go to http://en.gravatar.com/site/signup/ and signup with the email address that you always use for posting your comments.
2. After you signed up, there will be a verification email send to your email address. Just click the link that the server sent to you to verify your registration.
3. Ok, once you clicked the verification link, you will be forwarded to a page where it request you to fill your desired nickname and password.
4. Choose the nickname properly! Coz you will not be able to change your nickname in the future! It will be permanent! And only use lower case letters or mix with numbers. It does not allow upper case letters, space and any symbols.
5. For the password, you will have to mix letters and numbers combination for it. Gravatar does not accept number only passwords.
6. Once you filled up everything, just click the “Sign Up” button.
7. After you been forwarded to you Gravatar account page, you will need to upload your desired picture onto the server.
8. There will be a blue colour text written “Add one by clicking here!” if you never uploaded any picture to your Gravatar account before. Just click it and start the uploading process.
9. There is 3 upload option you may choose. 1st is upload the files from your computer. 2nd is grab images via images that already hosted in the Internet. And 3rd would be grab you avatar picture from your WordPress account (if you have one).
10. But at here now, I will only teach you to upload from your computer since usually people already downloaded their preferred picture to be their avatar.
11. Click the link and when you are at the next page, click browse to select the picture that you want to upload. Then, click “Next”.
12. Now you will be greeted with the image editing page. Just drag until the selection area covering your desired area of the picture or click and drag the selection area until it expand bigger until you get what you want. Areas that is outside of that selection area will be crop away once you click “Crop and Finish”.
13. When you reach to the next page, it will ask you about your avatars rating. The rating description is listed at that page. If you are using porn pictures as your avatar, do not click “G”! Usually those websites, blogs or forum will set the limit to “G” if it is a site for children! The rating is set so that if you avatar exceed the rating limit, it will not show to avoid children see things that they shouldn’t see! So don’t flash your dick in front of an innocent little girl!!!
14. Ok, now your Gravatar has been set and ready to be use. It will take about 5 minutes to update your avatar on the server. After that, you will be able to see your Gravatar appear in all WordPress blog’s comments that you have posted.

Whenever you wanted to change your Gravatar, you can just go to http://www.gravatar.com to change your picture.
I you have more than one email address that you use for posting comments, you may handle all you email’s Gravatar inside the same account.

So how do I add another email?
This will be damn simple!

1. Did you see the “My Account” drop down bar on the top of your Gravatar profile page? Just click there and click the “Add an Email Address”.
2. After you added the new email address, it will also send you a verification email to your second email address to verify that the email address is yours, same like when you register the account. Just that you do not need to create account anymore.
3. If you wanted to use the same picture for your second email, just click the email address you have added, then click the picture at the bottom of the page.
4. Click “Confirm” to assign that picture to that email address.
5. However, if you wanted to have another picture uploaded as the second email’s avatar, just click at the drop down menu at the top and click “Add an Image”. You will then see the similar upload process as what you have seens when you upload your first avatar picture.
6. After upload the picture, just do the step 3 and step 4 at above and choose the new picture.

Now, you have managed 2 email’s Gravatar in the same account. You may add as much email as you like, just follow the steps at above, then you shouldn’t have any problem on managing your Gravatars.

Besides WordPress, there is several blog sites and blog scripts is supporting Gravatar, this is why it is called as Globally Recognized Avatar. I hope the negotiation between Blogspot and Gravatar development team is success so that Gravatar will be also implement in Blogspot.

Note: Not all WordPress blogs is using Gravatars, it is just majority of them. If the blog owner disabled using Gravatar, your Gravatar will not appear. So don’t think there is any problem during your Gravatar setup if you don’t see your Gravatar appear in some certain WordPress blogs.